Two Opera Reviews

(The normal purpose of reviews is to guide the reader as to what is worth seeing/doing. Both of these were one-offs, which makes this rather redundant, but feel free to read anyway.).

The final concert I attended in Manchester was Venus and Adonis and Dido and Aeneas, performed by the New London Consort, Anna Dennis, Roderick Williams, and Penelope Appleyard. The musical performance was done on period instruments, and beyond that there is little to say. For an opera, this need not be a bad thing, since the focus is after all the singers. The playing was competent, if uninspired. I didn't notice any errors, but nor did the instrumentalists at any point make me sit up and think "That's amazing!"

A picture presumably of a rehearsal: Roderick
Williams left, Penelope Appleyard left, and one of
the backing singers in the middle. Taken from
Appleyard's website.

Anna Dennis played Venus and Dido. I can't remember a great deal, this being a full month ago now, but her singing was fine - at times unclear, but that's always a risk with sopranos. Roderick Williams played Adonis and Aeneas with gusto - aside from a touch of grey hair (he is 50, after all) he looked every inch the besotted young hunter as Adonis, and just as much the sharply dressed, confident statesman as Aeneas. Penelope Appleyard was a playful Cupid and a sympathetic Belinda, and played both roles well. (As a side note: she looked pretty as Belinda, but this was as nothing compared to how attractive she looked when cross-dressing in order to play Cupid. I'm not certain whether this is a fact about her appearance or about the tenuousness of my heterosexuality).

The background singers were for the most part competent. I wasn't a great fan of the performance of the Spirit disguised as Mercury, though the use of sunglasses to indicate when the singers were evil spirits and when they were court attendants was a nice touch.

The operas were both interesting enough - neither would make a list of my favourite operas, but I am glad to have heard them and would happily listen to them again.


Earlier this week I was at a church in Stourbridge to hear "Opera: The Best Bits!", a concert put on by a local community choir and orchestra who give a charity concert each year with a different theme. I was there due to a family friend being in the choir, and to be honest it was about as mediocre as you would expect. The performers were for the most part competent but not professional, and it showed. Most obviously there was a lack of confidence among many members of the orchestra, which made the slips (when they happened) very easy to hear. The compère was a local boy made good, who is now an actor down in London, but he was horrendously under-prepared: he introduced every song in the exact same way ("This piece is from [opera], which was first performed at [opera house] in city [in year], and tells the story of [frequently inaccurate two-sentence summary]. The hero/heroine does/doesn't die at the end.") and clearly hadn't looked up the pronunciation of some of the names - my mother was struggling to avoid laughing at his reference to "Oh fondue temple saynt".

The choir were barely audible above the orchestra at time, but were otherwise in good tune. The soloists were perhaps the most variable part of the evening - one was a professional soprano who gave genuinely excellent interpretations of Habanera, the Flower Duet and other overplayed mainstays of opera collections, while at the other end was a member of the choir who ambitiously but perhaps unwisely attempted (among other songs) Nessun Dorma but completely lacked the strength of voice to pull it off. It wasn't a waste of an evening, but had I been required to pay for my ticket (aren't parents wonderful?!) I would have baulked at it.

Some housekeeping

You may have noticed that I have not blogged much recently. I hope to get back into blogging more, although this is unlikely to happen immediately as I shall be away at Freedom Week for most of next week and will hopefully not need my laptop for that week.

I have my final results from my degree, and I got a First! This is not tremendously surprising - after the final exam, I thought that there was about an 80% probability that I would get a First - but it's pleasing nonetheless. Roll on Budapest!

Effective Altruists need not be Moral Saints

There is an ongoing debate in philosophy about how demanding our moral obligations can be. One of the most popular objections to utilitarianism (roughly, the view that we ought always to maximise the sum of happiness, regardless of whatever else this entails) is that it is impossible to live up to.

Philosophy Bro has summaries of two of the most important writings on this subject, which I highly recommend reading even if you have no prior understanding of philosophy: Peter Singer's Drowning Child Argument and Susan Wolf's Moral Saints.

Singer argues, very convincingly, that we have almost unlimited duties to help the poor of the third world. Wolf argues that a life which is 100% dedicated to doing good is in fact a rather unappealing idea, and that this kind of existence misses out on many valuable pieces of life.

I actually lean towards agreeing with Wolf here. This means that I reject Singer's ultimate conclusion. But I still think his argument goes a lot further than most people would be comfortable with. For people who (a) can donate money to combating third world poverty while maintaining a minimally decent standard of living and (b) are aware that effective third-world charities exist, I think there is a duty to give at least some of your income to effective charities.

This kind of donation should not ruin your life. No effective altruist that I know devotes themselves 100% to helping people. Indeed, if we're honest I suspect that being involved in effective altruism represents a form of consumption for many members. You meet all kinds of intelligent and interesting people, leapfrog a great deal of inferential distance, and get to hang out with high-status people.

There are a number of different claims that you could make regarding the demandingness of our positive obligations:
(1) We must maximise the amount we give; that is, giving all that we can without damaging our ability to give in future.
(2) We must give all we can above what is necessary for a minimally decent lifestyle.
(3) We must give enough that, if everyone else were to give the same amount (or the same proportion of their income), every single person would have a minimally decent lifestyle.
(4) We must give a modest proportion of our income above what we need.
(5) We must give everything that we are legally obliged to give.
(6) We have no positive obligations.

All of these, with the exception of (5), are statements which I consider plausibly true. My own intention is to give more than is implied by (3) or (4), but less than that which is implied by (2). Living according to (1) seems quite simply impossible.

Desert Island Discs

The BBC Radio 4 program Desert Island Discs features a different famous guest. The guest is asked to imagine that they will be stranded upon a desert island and must choose what they will have with them. In particular, they are asked to pick:

• eight pieces of music
• a book. (They receive the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare in addition to whichever book they choose).
• One luxury item of no use for escaping the island.

I do not anticipate being invited to the program any time soon - for one thing, my life hasn't been at all interesting enough yet - but have worked out a list of what I would choose were I in this position. It is not entirely complete - several of the choices are merely a choice from two or three different pieces - and is of course subject to change, but here (in no particular order) is my rough list.

Gaol Ise Gaol I/Lisnagun Jig (The Eilidhs) or Llongau Caenarfon (trad.) 

I want at least one folksy tune, and these are both lovely songs. Gaol Ise Goal I also has the distinction of being the only piece on here that I first heard live, at IVFDF 2014 in Edinburgh, so there's a personal-interest angle on that one.

Something from West Side Story (Leonard Berstein & Stephen Sondheim). I don't know what, because there are so many incredible songs from which to choose: Something's Coming, Maria, Tonight, America, One Hand One Heart, Tonight (reprise), I Feel Pretty, Gee! Officer Krupke!, I Have a Love... For the sake of having something here, I'll choose one which came out well in the original film.

Appalachian Spring (Aaron Copland). I would expect to be allowed the entire ballet, but if I'm not then I would go specifically for the fourth section, which contains what is in my opinion the single greatest moment in all of classical music. In the video below, the suite starts at about 2:05, while the moment I love so much is at 16:05 (although to appreciate it you need to listen to the thirty seconds or so leading up to it).

Incidentally, the seventh section (an adaptation of Simple Gifts, a Quaker song known to generations of pupils of Anglican schools as Lord of the Dance) is something I detested a few years back, thinking it overwrought and pretentious. I still think that it doesn't work on its own, but now that I listen to it as the climax of a half-hour ballet rather than as an isolated piece overplayed by Classic FM, I have very much come to appreciate it.

White Blank Page (Mumford & Sons) or The Sea and the Sky or I was an Oak Tree (Jonathan Byrd)
This choice allows me to combine folksiness with modernity - twice the signalling!

Symphony no. 6 "Pastoral" (Ludwig van Beethoven) or Symphony no. 9 "From the New World" (Antonin Dvorak)
Two of my favourite long pieces of classical music. Other alternatives would have included a number of works by Elgar (Cello Concerto, Enigma Variations), Tchaikovsky (Violin Concerto, Swan Lake), and probably a whole bunch of other things.
The Pastoral Symphony is just such a happy piece, a such a joy to listen to! The New World Symphony, on the other hand, can in no way be described as happy, but has some wonderful tunes. For example, the first movement conjures for me mental images of early settlers arriving in the New World during a sea storm and looking at the villages of the Iroquois. This is completely anachronistic given that Dvorak was writing several centuries after this, but then again he was a terrible ethnomusicologist so perhaps it is what he had in mind.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train) (Half Man Half Biscuit)
I thought I ought perhaps to include something by a slightly out-of-date band. Both of the possible bands, HMHB and the Rolling Stones, are still active, so I just went for my favourite song by one of the two.

Varen or Wedding-Day at Troldhaugen (Edvard Grieg) or Bailero (Joseph Cantaloube)
Varen is a lovely song, while I am determined to fit Wedding-Day at Troldhaugen into my own wedding somehow. (See also). I have no idea what Bailero is about, but it is the most soothing song I have ever encountered.

Mary's Room (Claude-Michel Schoenberg & Scott Alexander)
Les Miserables has nice music, but that's not really why I'm including this. It's more because the Effective Altruism/ Less Wrong community is so fun to be part of, and this song would give me a connection to that (however tenuous). If someone did a well-produced version of Philosopher Kripke then I would be tempted to take that to fill both this slot and the West Side Story slot.

Be Thou My Vision (trad.)
I may not really believe the Bible any more, but you can't tell the story of my life without mentioning the church. This is my favourite hymn, so in it goes. An alternative would be When I Survey The Wondrous Cross.

The book would be Rationality: from AI to Zombies, which taught me how to think; the luxury item would have to be a piano.

My thoughts on the EU

I don't lean especially either in favour of UK membership of the EU or against it, given the current political climate. In an ideal world we would withdraw from the EU, declare open borders or something not far off, and put the savings from leaving the EU into reducing the deficit. Realistically, withdrawal from the EU would lead to lower immigration into the UK, and any savings would just wasted in the same way that most government spending gets wasted.

What is (in my view) a serious issue, though, is uncertainty regarding British membership of the EU. So long as there is uncertainty over EU funding, immigration, tariffs, and all the other things which governments stick their greasy paws into, businesses will be reluctant to invest in projects which are reliant upon these uncertainties.

For that reason, my opinion regarding an EU referendum is "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly." Pushing a referendum back to 2018 might change the result, but it also creates two or three years of uncertainty which the markets will hate. If there is going to be an election, it should be held either in October 2015 or in May 2016.

It should be made clear that I see this as the best course for the UK as a whole. My personal interests would be very well served by a referendum being pushed back to at least 2017, given that I intend to spend the next two years living in Budapest. So long as the UK is in the EU, I can just turn up there, fill in a few forms, and live there indefinitely without the Hungarian state demanding all that much money to leave me alone. If the UK leaves the EU, then I'll need to sort out a visa (expensive and fairly time-consuming).

Woo watch

This paper sounds good pic.twitter.com/C3El3czV7T
— Ben Southwood (@bswud) April 2, 2015

I had a bit of a further look into this. The paper itself is for the most part rather dull - the highlight comes as early as the first page:

I now want to have a look at this paper in which the author apparently shows Marxist economics to be on sounder foundations than neoclassical economics!

The author herself is a bit of a character. She seems to almost be a parody of the stereotypical far-left political activist. Quoting from her profile at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where she is a professor of economics:

"I... enjoy cooking and eating healthy, organic food; walking and biking; communing with nature... I am inspired by and involved with the Occupy movement."

She participates in the Cambridge Time Trade Circle, which is interesting enough to merit its own discussion independent of this person.

Among her many papers, 90% of whose titles include at least one of the words "Marxist" and "feminist" if not both, are such gems as "Spirituality and Economic Transformation" and "Why feminist, Marxist and anti-racist economists should be feminist-Marxist-anti-racist economists".

Her classes must be something of an unusual experience. She begins each lecture with a short meditation, her introductory economics course requires students to watch the film "Affluenza" and to read about "Buddhist economics".

Where do they find these people? And why on earth do these people get tenure in economics departments?

Accepted to MA Philosophy program at CEU

I have greatly enjoyed studying PPE over the last almost-three years, and am very pleased to say that I will be doing so for at least another two years. I have been accepted onto the two-year MA program in Philosophy at Central European University in the beautiful city of Budapest with a Partial Fellowship!

The outline of the course is here, the outline of the fellowship is here.